The celebration started quite literally with song and dance. Then, a clutch of important-looking people passed around business cards and compared notes on successful techniques to rope in many more besotted parents who'd then sign up their kids for 'summer fun'.u00a0 
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FUN TIME: For full-time working parents, summer camps are a necessity, not a luxury. File pic</td></tr></tbody></table>The air was fairly crackling with creative one-upmanship and the fun certainly wasn't coming cheap. A five-day nature camp, at the Nilgiris foothills, was being advertised at Rs 12,000; another offered to take teenagers around the world for a few lakh rupees; 15 classes of Bollywood 'shake it or break it' style of dance masti were being marketed at Rs 3000; even the good ole' drawing and painting class had donned a glam avatar ('mixed media art') and flaunted a tag of a few cool thousands for two weeks! The whole world has been touched by the current recession. Or has it? I had schooled myself to stop complaining about new realities like pay cuts, knowing full well that there are lots of people out there who are battling disappearing jobs and home foreclosures. And, though all this cheer was threatening to snap my self-restraint, I was clearly discovering a business that's still wearing the boom-time cheer. Mom and dad may not be flocking to rooftop lounge bars to down tequila shots every Friday night after dropping off the kids at grandma's house, but when it comes to their young 'uns summer fun, they are clearly in no rush to turn suddenly thrifty. If truth be told, for full-time working parents, summer camps are a necessity, not a luxury. Even for parents who can stay at home, the thought of a nine-year-old inside the house for more than two months is frightening. And don't even hope to bemoan the summers gone by, when you and I rode our cycles into ditches or played lagori till we skinned our shins and weren't seen by our parents until they hollered for us! Summers have slowly and steadily come to mean specialty sports camps and expensive adventures. Only the 'uncool' keep their children at home, and rely on their own wit and imagination to keep them busy! We may not have the equivalent of the American Camp Association yet, but with more such smart people like the ones I met today, I'm sure we're getting there. Should we be glad that in some sectors at least, good times aren't just a distant memory?

Australia can rob India of No 2 spot tomorrow

The celebration started quite literally with song and dance.

Hard times... where?

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